To be a Carer, you have to be 'available' for 35 hours a week. You are also 'allowed' to work for around 16 hours a week, providing it's pretty much minimum wage. This means that most Carers work a 51 hour week, for a fraction of the amount most other folks earn.

Most Carers would prefer to remain at home caring for the people they care for, but if many of them did, they'd starve to death, lose their homes and generally end up needing to be cared for themselves....

The Carers Association is trying to get the allowance brought into line with other benefits as at present Carers are hugely discriminated against. They save the country hundreds of thousands of pounds a year, probably MILLIONS actually, if not BILLIONS, whilst having to exist on the poverty line themselves.

---

For many months, Mr. Gnomo (and a number of others) and Ms. Cornish have not been allowed to address or respond to one another. They are incapable of carrying on a mature conversation with each other. For some reason, Mr. Gnomo decided to try to pick a fight today (despite the fact that the others have heeded this prohibition). His deliberately provocative posts were deleted. Mr. Gnomo is hereby banned from this thread, and from all threads initiated by Lizzie Cornish.

But the same goes for all of you. You're all showing your worst today, and it's disgusting. Quit the name-calling and carry on a civilized discussion, or your posts will be deleted with no explanation or hesitation - and I'll shut down any thread that becomes contentious. I've had it.

-Joe Offer, Forum Moderator-